Tip of the week # 47613 February 2016

As you probably have noticed Microsoft Office automatically corrects typical
capitalization errors. For example, it will automatically capitalize names
of days and capitalize the first letter following a full stop or exclamation
or question mark. But what if AutoCorrect makes an unwanted correction? You
can obviously undo it by pressing CTRL + Z) (or the Undo button if you insist
;) But if you use a lot of specific acronyms or abbreviations with
punctuation at the end of it, why not work with an exceptions list. (In Word
and Outlook, when you undo an AutoCorrect, the unwanted corrections that you
undo are automatically added to the list of exceptions.)

Type the word - including the punctuation; for example, Cambs. - in the
relevant box on the relevant tab and click on Add.

Select any of the exceptions you want to remove and click Delete. (OK,
I'm not a native English speaker but as far as I know, if an abbreviation
consists of the first and last letters of a word, you don't need to use a
full stop at the end, so you might want to delete certain exceptions such as
Mr. and Dr.)

Click OK (three times).

And here's something nice for a change . the exceptions list works across MS
Office. So once you've done it in Word you don't have to it in Outlook or
Excel. (That said, they don't seem to end up in the list in PowerPoint.)

Finally, over the years I've encouraged you to use AutoCorrect for words you
typically mistype, create abbreviations for words you use a lot or add words
that contain international characters. See tip_27.html,
tip_127.html and tip_229.php if you
want to have another look.

* Unless stated otherwise, these tips were written for Microsoft Office 2010.